Sparrow Heart

Andrew Frost

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Janet Clayton Gallery, Waterloo

Part painting, part performance works, the paintings gathered together that form Theresa Byrne’s exhibition Sparrow Heart at Janet Clayton Gallery are extraordinary works that hover between abstraction and figuration, rich in associations and potential interpretations, but resolutely abstract works of colour and form.  Across 27 individual works, Byrne’s ink on paper paintings create a sense of depth and form from the mixture of inks and stains, some areas forming solid lines and swirls of colour, other areas fading into washes with stippled and striated details.

The performance aspect of the painting arises from Byrne’s method of painting. Confined to a wheelchair and limited in movement, the artists uses strands of her hair that she lays down on the paper and then applies ink over the top, spraying, pouring and puddling pigment, then using fans to move the colour across the surface, The removal of the hair leaves startling white patterns in the work. Given the method of painting, the works have an undeniable organic quality, their surreal shapes as Sargasso seas of still ink, recall the work of painters such as James Gleeson. In their own right Byrne’s work is mesmerizingly strange.

Pic: Theresa Byrnes, Sparrow Heart – Hurricane Sandy, ink on paper, 57 x 76 cm, image courtesy the artist